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Inception is a movie fans 'dream'

 Christopher Nolan, director of Memento, Insomnia, The Prestige and The Dark Knight, has become a must-see director, on the same level as Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese.  Anytime he makes a movie, you must see it, and his latest film, Inception, is no exception.

 Starring Leonardo DiCaprio (my No. 2 behind Denzel), Inception is a movie about an agency who’s job it is to infiltrate a human’s dreams for the purpose of stealing information.  

 Going in, I had the impression that the movie would be hard to follow (based on the trailers), and it was.  Anybody who sees this movies mustn’t drink anything beforehand, because if you leave to go to the bathroom, you’ll be lost when you get back.  And that isn’t a bad thing.  I want a movie that constantly keeps my attention, and this one certainly did that.

"Knight and Day" knot good

  I was looking forward to this movie due in part to some positive reviews by critics regarding the performance of Tom Cruise.  Suffice it to say, Cruise is the only good thing about this picture.

 The movie is about Cruise's Roy Miller, some kind of government secret agent -- for what agency, we don't really know -- and he is either on the run from the people he works for because they are corrupt, or he has gone rogue and he is on the run because he's being chased.  If we were ever told which one he was, I must have missed it.

"Grown Ups" is your average buddy comedy

  If you ever said to yourself "what would it be like to watch Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, David Spade, Rob Schneider and Kevin James hang out together", wonder no more.

Grown Ups is a just a movie about childhood friends hanging out as adults.  If you expect anything more than that, you'll be letdown, but if you go in expecting some funny jokes, a bunch of physical gags, and some cameos by other Sandler favorites, you'll have a great time.

 The movie's "plot" centers around the group attending the funeral of their childhood basketball coach.  It's the first time they've all been together in something like 30 years, and it's funny to watch as they all make fun of each other, just as we imagine they would in real life.

Shrek lives happily ever after

  After three films that were met with varying reviews, Shrek Forever After begged an obvious question (why?) with an even more obvious answer (because the series has generated over a $1 billion in the United States alone).

  The final installment is a marked improvement over Shrek 3, but it fails to recapture the magic of the first two films, but really, how many of the last movies in a series are ever better than the first?

  In the final chapter, DreamWorks uses a plot similar to Back to the Future II, when Marty McFly enters an alternate universe where Biff Tannen is his wealthy stepfather and things aren’t what Marty knows them to really be.  The same thing happens to that lovable ogre Shrek.

  During the birthday party for his three little ogre babies, Shrek, obviously getting dull with the routine of marriage and family, storms out of the party and comes across Rumpelstiltskin.  Shrek wants to go back, even just for a day, to a time when he was a feared ogre.  

Robin Hood- Movie Review

For those of you expecting the “rob from the rich and give to the poor” Robin Hood, or the “courting Maid
Marian” Robin Hood, or the man with a “band of merry men” Robin Hood, this movie by Ridley Scott isn’t for you.

Scott, who 10 years ago famously directed Gladiator, has his cinema-mainstay Russell Crowe playing Robin Longstride, on his way back to England after fighting with King Richard the Lion Heart in the Crusades.

After the death of Richard, Robin and friends Little John, Will Scarlett and Alan-a-Dale, decide to head back to England.  Along the way, they comes across the dying Robert of Locksley, and he asks Robin to return his sword to his father in Nottingham.   The father, an old, wise, blind man named Walter, implores Robin to take over the persona of his recently deceased son in order to save their land from being confiscated by the newly crowned King John (I assume this is how Robin becomes known as Robin of Locksley).

Robert Locksley, in this story, happens to be married to Marian, played by Cate Blanchett, my least favorite actress of all time.  I cannot believe for a leading lady how unattractive she really is, and the back-and-forth between her and Crowe doesn’t make me want to see them end up together. 

The devilish Godfrey becomes the Earl Marshall of England, a position he hopes will allow him to facilitate an easy takeover by the French.   He and his men, under the guise of collecting taxes, brutally invade villages, burning them to the ground. 

"Bruno" movie review

This follow-up to Borat by Sasha Baron Cohen didn't quite live up to the standards he set with his Kazakhi documentary from 2006.

Bruno, a flaming homosexual fashionista, travels the world in the hopes of becoming the "most famous Austrian since Hitler". 

Bruno does similar outrageous gags like Borat did, taking advantage of unsuspecting people and one annoyed terrorist. 

The result isn't as shocking as Borat, but the humor is much more crude, with an inordinate amount of full-frontal nudity.

It is good for a couple of laugh-out-loud moments, but not on the scale of Borat.

Rating:  2 1/2 Schnauzers

Movie Review- "Angels & Demons"

Based on the best-selling novel by Dan Brown, "Angels and Demons" is thrill ride that kept me on the edge of my seat throughout the entire movie.

Much like "The Da Vinci Code" for me, I had not read the book going in.  The setting in the book takes place before the time in DVC, but in the movie, "Angels and Demons" comes after Tom Hanks' Robert Langdon cracks the secret of the bloodline of Jesus.

In "A&D", Langdon is brought to the Vatican to help with a threat being perpetrated by the Illuminati, a secret society said to be far more powerful in the story than they actually were.

The pope had just died, and the cardinals were about to enter "conclave", where they would elect a new pontiff.  The movie takes place over one night as Hanks and a female scientist, Ayelet Zurer. 

The story has a bunch of different twists, and since I didn't read the book, I didn't see most of them coming. 

It was an intense story, but certainly not as controversial as the topic and theme of DVC.

Overall, it was a great movie and great follow-up by Ron Howard to DVC.

Rating:
3 1/2 Schnauzer

"Defiance" Movie Review

Defiance, starring Daniel Craig and Liev Schrieber as two of the four Bielski brothers, tells the story of a large group of Jews on the run from the Germans deep in the forests of Poland and Belorussia.

Craig leads as commander of the forest "community" and does a nice job in a role completely different from that of James Bond. His character tries to have morals, though in a time of war and where his family and friends have been brutally murdered, morals are hard to come by.

The group starts small but grows and grows throughout the film, making survival hard to come by. The people had to forage for food, live in makeshift huts and survive through the heat of summer and the dead of winter.

The story was one I was not familiar with before watching this film. It is an amazing story, one that is called "A True Story" before the movie begins. If this story is true, it is nothing short of remarkable.

What continues to amaze me though every time I see a movie about World War II and the Nazis, is that the United States, supposedly the most powerful nation in the world, did nothing for years while Hitler eliminated millions of innocent human beings from the earth.

The movie has a powerful message and by the end, you are cheering for the community and just hoping they can continue to survive.

Grade: Four Schnauzers

"Valkyrie" Movie Review

I was very happy to finally get to see this movie (thanks, Colleen). The release was delayed by MGM four separate times, but it was worth the wait.
The movie stars Tom Cruise as Col. Claus von Stauffenberg, the main figure in the July 20, 1944 assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler. This plot was the last of 15 known plots against the Nazi leader, and the movie did a fairly solid job showing how the plot took shape.
Cruise's character became the central figure of a plot that led to the hangings of about 200 people). The task of making it an enjoyable movie was compounded by the fact that everyone knew the outcome; that Hitler survived and continued in power until the following year). Director Bryan Singer uses an ensemble including Kenneth Branagh, Oscar-winner Tom Wilkinson, Eddie Izzard and Bill Nighy to tell his story.
I would recommend this movie to fans of history. Cruise, while the big "star", didn't dominate the screen like he does in other movies (Mission: Impossible, etc), but fans of his will not be disappointed.

Grade: Three-and-a-half Schnauzers